Fallen
by ensou
Summary: I first saw her when I was five. Ever since then, she was like a guardian angel, swooping in to save me at the last moment. She said she was anything but. I told her she was wrong.
1. First Meeting (Bella)

**Chapter 1**  
 **First Meeting | Bella**

The first time I saw her, I was five.

I was in Central Park with my mom, as we were visiting my Aunt Becky, mom's sister, in New York, and she'd insisted that it was somewhere we had to visit while we were in the city. We'd done the carousel and the zoo, and I'd tired myself out enough that we were walking back out of the park towards my aunt's apartment.

Mom had stopped at one of the vendors that had set up a table on the path –which I'm pretty sure was illegal–, and I'd gotten easily bored, five year-old attention span and all.

So I'd walked away a bit, not so far because Mom had said not to wander off, but still far enough that the sounds and voices faded slightly.

Back then, being only five, I didn't think of Alice as breathtaking. Didn't think of her as astoundingly beautiful. I did think she was pretty, but that wasn't what stood out to me.

She looked… otherworldly. Out of place with the surrounding environment which –while very vibrant in early June– had somehow seemed dull in comparison to her, sitting on a peeling green-painted metal benches off the path under the shade of one of the many trees.

Her short, wispy black hair shifted slightly in the breeze that blew through the park. Her skin managed to be more pale than mine was, which was an achievement unto itself, and almost looked like it was glowing slightly. Her arms were held close to her chest, hugging herself.

My first thought when I saw her wasn't to run away, like it probably should have been. It wasn't to go back to my mom and forget about ever seeing the odd, porcelain-doll like girl who could have been a marble statue on the bench.

No, my first thought upon seeing Alice was: _She looks so lonely._

I walked closer, enchanted by how absolutely _still_ she was, and was surprised when I saw that her eyes weren't closed, but open, staring off into the distance.

And… they were red. A bright, shockingly strong vermilion.

I gasped, and immediately her eyes darted over and landed on me.

I fidgeted uncomfortably, embarrassed to have been caught staring. "U-um. Hi!" I said quietly.

She smiled slightly, the edges of her lips quirking upwards. "Hello."

I inched closer to her, watching her, until I got to the bench and pulled myself up onto it, so that I was sitting about a foot away, still looking at her. Her eyes hadn't left my face for a moment.

"I'm Bella," I said, still shifting in place slightly.

"Hello, Bella. I'm Alice," she returned.

"…You're really pretty," I blurted. "Did you know your eyes are red?"

She laughed quietly under her breath. "Yes. Yes, I did. But thank you for telling me anyways."

I nodded, content in my child-logic that my part was now fulfilled.

"How old are you, Bella?"

"I'm five," I told her. "But I'll be six in three months!" She smiled again. "U-um. How old are you?"

"Old," she said mysteriously. "Very old."

My eyebrows scrunched together. "How old? You don't look older than my mom!"

Her smile changed a little to slightly mischievous, conspiratory. "Can you keep a secret, Bella?"

I nodded, my curiosity flaring at the hint of knowing something that other people didn't.

"I'm ninety-one," she whispered.

The breeze rustled the leaves on the trees, making the slight glow of her skin dance as I just stared at her.

"No way!"

She giggled. "Yes way."

"My gramma isn't even that old! That's… _ancient_ ," I said, proud at my use of vocabulary.

Alice nodded. "I know."

There was a short silence.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"My aunt Becky lives here. Me and Mom had to take a plane and _everything_. It was so big!"

"I see," Alice said, smiling. "But why are you sitting with me? Where's your mother?"

"She's doing other stuff. You looked lonely," I told her simply in explanation

Her smile became a little sad. "You're a very perceptive girl, aren't you, Bella?"

"What does per-cep-tive mean?" I asked, unsure if that was good or bad.

"It means you see things other people don't."

"Oh. …Is that a good thing?"

"It's not good or bad," she told me. "It just is."

"Oh," I said again, still not sure if it was good or not. I decided it was. "…You're really nice."

The smile became happier again. "Thank you, Bella."

"Bella?" a voice called from behind me. I turned around automatically. "Bella, where are you?" It was my mom.

"Mom?" I said.

"Bella!" my mom said, finally coming into view from around the corner behind one of the bushes along the walkway. "What are you doing?"

"Talking with Miss Alice," I said unabashedly.

My mother looked confused. "Who?"

"Miss Alice," I repeated, turning around to look at Alice.

But there was nobody there. I looked around, searching, but there was no sign of her.

"Come on, Bella. It's time to go."

I blinked, and then turned back around to my mom, climbing off of the seat to go over to her. "B-but I really was talking to her. She was there!"

My mom smiled in that way adults do when they're just humoring you. "I believe you."

I frowned. "She really was! Really, really!"

Mom took my hand, leading me back to the sunny walkway and the path out of the park. "I said I believe you Bella."

I looked back one last time, to see if she was there, but there was no trace of Alice, only the breeze and the shifting patterns of light and dark shade on the bench.

Somehow, though, I knew I hadn't imagined her.

* * *

 **A/N:**

A very short intro chapter, written in about an hour. This is probably going to be a short story (gonna to try to keep this under 40k words, god help me), something light to work on between my numerous other stories. I wanted to do something sufficiently cute and fluffy, and was sad that there hasn't been much new Bellice lately, so… yeah. Have some adorable 5 year-old Bella.

In case you couldn't tell, this is AU. Alice had her first vision about Jasper, but before she got to the diner to meet him, her visions changed and she saw him meeting and being happy with somebody else. With no vision about the Cullens, nor any reason to search for an alternative diet since she has no memories of being human (and thus has no reason/way to empathize with humans) and only knowing being a vampire, Alice became nomadic, using her gift to avoid notice by other vampires and staying in large cities for a few months to hunt before moving on to another.

Transposition will have an update in the next week, and the next interlude segment of AFHB and (finally) a new chapter of Crimson will be after that.

Reviews, pleaaaaaseeee :)


	2. First Meeting (Alice)

**Chapter 2**  
 **First Meeting | Alice**

The first time I saw her, she was "five, but I'll be six in three months."

The first time I saw her in person, that is. In the flesh. Her flesh.

God, her flesh. Flushed with a cherry-red blush from the blood pulsing through her veins and her little jack-rabbit heart.

She looked just like I'd seen her in my vision: bright eyes, brown hair, and small in that childish way, her cheeks still round with baby-fat.

 _Bella_.

My visions told me she was important, somehow. Unusually, I'd had one of the strangest ones in my existence so far, like seeing flashes at the end of a long tunnel. A beautiful brunette girl laughing, and me next to her, doing the same. And then the same girl, now pale snow-white with red eyes, looking at me with happiness dancing in those bright-colored irides, before sweeping me up and hugging me while twirling around and laughing.

For the first time, I had… hope. Hope that I would no longer be alone. No longer solitary like the past seventy-two years. Seventy-two years of avoiding the others of my kind.

Early, only a few years after waking up, I'd had a vision of an auburn-haired man, covered in crescent-shaped scars that stood out on his skin. Then, I'd believed that he would be my first companion, a partner and other half. But not even half-way to traveling where I could see myself meeting him, the visions changed. If I met up with him, he would not be alone, but joined by another, a strawberry-blonde woman who stood by his side, smiling when she looked at him.

It hurt. It was my first experience with frustration. With anger. With hopelessness. With loss. So many emotions. So many feelings that I had no idea what to do with. It would hurt too much, seeing that man, when I'd seen how happy we could have been and now knew that was something impossible, something that would never be.

So I didn't. I ran the opposite direction. I went north. Lived on the streets, in abandoned apartments and warehouses of Toronto. Ottawa. Montreal. Québec. And after a decade or so, it didn't hurt as much anymore. It helped that I'd distracted myself. Learned French. Read through entire libraries. But I always moved on, always left after a couple of years.

It had become my existence. Hiding in the shadows. Consuming the life-blood, that amazing thing ran through their veins, of those who wouldn't be missed or noticed.

The times changed, I kept moving. Europe. Asia. Africa. South America. But I always returned to the place where I'd awoken.

I'd been nearby –only a state or two away– when I'd received the clearest vision of her, the one in which she looked the same as she did now. It was that _hope_ that I'd felt after my first vision of her, and the harsh memories reminding me of how I'd failed before that had spurred me forward. Had pushed me to immediately set out. To not let this chance go, not _again_.

It was why I'd risked venturing out here, among the humans in daytime, where there was a chance the sun would reveal I _wasn't_ human. And that, in turn, was why I was at that moment perched forty feet up in the tree I'd been sitting under.

Our conversation had been so brief, cut short by her mother's intrusion. I didn't resent the woman, but I still had a desire that I could have spent more time with Bella, to understand her. To find out who she was, why she was so important.

She was only visiting, she'd said. It was temporary. And that meant I would soon need to move on, to follow her back to wherever she was. To be able to watch over her. It was like an itch, an urge.

Not that I particularly wanted to fight it.

I bit my lip. I at least had the advantage of my visions, which would help me in locating her. That would have been troublesome otherwise, especially in such a place where scents mixed together and became muddled by the exhaust of cars and other various strong smells.

It was easier now that I'd met her. Easier to focus on Bella and dance up and down her path of _could be maybe will be_. It was still blurry. Still not as clear as when I looked at my own path, when I hunted and carefully checked each and every potential meal to ensure I'd never draw attention, never be noticed.

I looked forward days, dipping in and out of Bella's path, searching and then finally finding what I wanted: a flight information board, with Bella's mother looking at _Los Angeles_ _, CA_ under the departures.

I sat in the tree, waiting for the sun to set. I had a location, now I just had to get there.


	3. Second Meeting (Bella)

**Chapter 3**  
 **Second Meeting | Bella**

I couldn't have forgotten her if I'd tried.

Those bright red eyes stuck with me, like they'd left an impression upon my soul. At least once a week, I'd have dreams in which they featured.

Mom didn't believe me about Alice, so I didn't tell her. My grandma was more receptive, telling me stories of guardian angels and things that my mother gave her looks for. She told me that there were things beyond our understanding, and that keeping an open mind to the unknowable was becoming a lost thing.

Her words stuck with me, because I _knew_ Alice wasn't a normal person. She was special, something _else_ like my grandma talked about, and she was particularly special to me, because I was the only one who truly knew about her, who'd seen her.

* * *

Time passed. I turned six and started Kindergarten.

And then… and then my grandma died.

I was inconsolable, and Alice was the last thing on my mind. I went to the funeral with my mom, and it suddenly all became so _real_ when I saw my grandmother in that casket, looking like she was asleep.

When we went home I was crying, but I was also so _angry_. Angry at the world, at everything for taking my grandma away. And when we actually got home, a home that would now always be empty when me and mom weren't there, it only got worse.

I was so wrapped up in everything, staring at my feet, that I completely missed the new feature when I went into my room.

"Bella." It was a beautiful voice. Like a breeze through the trees, like a wind-chime, but so sad.

I immediately looked up in the direction of the voice, my eyes widening when they found the source. "Ms. Alice?"

She sat on the edge of my bed like there was nothing unusual about it, looking at me with those bright red eyes.

Again perhaps I should have been scared. Perhaps I should have run to my mom to tell her about the girl that had suddenly appeared in my room, a girl who was barely more than a stranger.

But I couldn't. The day had taken its toll on me, and any thought of how weird or out-of-place it was for the otherworldly girl to simply appear in my room, sitting on my bed, simply didn't exist.

All I saw was someone who had been so _nice_ to me, who I'd almost come to fear that I _had_ just imagined, sitting there with so much emotion and sympathy in her eyes.

I couldn't have stopped myself running forward towards her even if I'd wanted to. "Ms. Alice!" My voice was a cross between crying out and a sob.

The pale girl opened her arms as I ran into them, holding onto her and absolutely _sobbing_ into her shirt. She hugged me, just holding me, not asking or saying anything.

Her skin was cold, but as wrapped up in crying as I was I couldn't have cared less.

I cried myself to the point of exhaustion, all the energy I had drained out of me, and eventually I got to the point where my eyes were getting heavy.

Alice noticed, and moved the covers of my bed so she could lift me up, place me under them, and then tuck me in.

Her moving me had woken me slightly, though I was still drowsy and liable to fall asleep any second. But I managed to think enough to form actual words in a way that made sense and ask the question I'd been wondering for months.

"Ms. Alice? Are you real?"

She smiled, leaning over me and brushing my hair away from my face. "I'm real. Even if it's just for you, I'm real. And I'm just 'Alice'. No 'Miss'."

I nodded sleepily, "Okay."

Alice shook her head in amusement. "Sleep, Bella."

I couldn't even move my head again, I was so tired, so I just closed my eyes and fell asleep.

* * *

When I woke, there was no sign of her, of course. Just like that day in the park, she was there, and then she was gone.

It only reinforced her mysteriousness to me more.

I hoped she'd come back, but she wasn't there the next day, nor the next. Days turned into weeks, and in those weeks, my life was turned upside down even further. In less than a month, we moved from Grandma's house in Riverside to Phoenix, Arizona, selling the house we'd been in and packing everything.

My mom got a job teaching at a school, and I went to a different one closer to our new house.

Every so often I'd have thoughts of Alice. I was reminded of her whenever I saw a particularly vivid color of red, or a contrast of ink-black and pale white next to each other.

Time passed without any hint of ever seeing Alice again, which made me inexplicably sad, but I slowly got caught up in school and helping my mom with things. Still, I couldn't have forgotten her even if I'd wanted to.

Thanksgiving came and passed, and Christmas arrived, both of the holidays having a much more somber atmosphere without my grandmother present as well. Both my mom and dad had presents for me –my father's having been mailed in– and while they were nice (not that I can even remember them now), they were completely overshadowed in my eyes by the one I found on my bed after spending Christmas morning with my mother.

It was a small box, simple, white, with only _From: A_ written in beautiful curling cursive on the top. But that was all I needed to know exactly where it had come from. Inside the box was a bracelet of chain-links, with a single ornament: a silver letter _B_ , fastened to one of the links by a small ring.

It was a bit big for my wrist, my hand easily slipping through it, but I knew I'd grow into it.

I hid the box, and in retrospect I don't quite know why I did that. Maybe I knew instinctively that if my mom found it, there would be questions or it'd get taken away from me.

Nevertheless, the result was that my belief in Alice was renewed, and the dreams of red eyes and kind smiles came back. She occupied my thoughts, both at home and at school, and I started wondering what she did, where she was, if she was off helping other people too, or if she was only my guardian angel, nobody else's. I hoped it was that, because it made me feel special, because my grandma said I was blessed to be one of the few to have ever seen theirs, and I wanted that to be _mine_.

We had art class every week. Finger-painting, crayons, markers, that sort of thing. It was _Kindergarten_ , okay? But one day, mid-February or sometime around then, we were supposed to try and draw a picture of someone or something special to us.

Most of the other kids drew their parents, maybe adding siblings and/or a pet, with their house in the background.

I… I drew Alice. _Tried_ to draw, at least.

And it was utterly, completely _frustrating_. I couldn't find the right shade of red, or the right off-white paleness, or the right deep-black-almost-blue, or the imperceptible glow that she'd had in the park.

The thing I drew couldn't even _compare_ to reality. It didn't do her justice at all. And I _hated_ it. Not the drawing, but my inability to even come close to representing just what she was like, that otherworldly-ness she carried about her.

It was the first time I tasted true failure and frustration. Up until then, I'd excelled in school. I could do Math, I could read and write very well, and I knew my subjects, but I _couldn't draw Alice_.

That discovery, that realization, hurt in ways I hadn't experienced.

I refused to accept it, and it was something that I swore –with the intensity only a six year-old can manage– I would change.


	4. First Gap (Bella)

**Chapter 4**  
 **First Gap | Bella**

Months passed. I didn't see Alice.

But unlike before, I wasn't afraid that she wasn't real, because she'd _said_ she was real. And she was my angel, so I knew she'd come back. It was hard waiting, but Mom always said that patience was important, so I could be patient, though it was really hard.

Eventually the school year came to a close, which meant I was finally out of kindergarten and I'd be in first grade in August.

I learned that summers in Phoenix were uncomfortably hot. One day it even got up to 110°F. Nothing like what California had been like. My mother tried to get me to do a couple things at a community center, but I preferred staying at home or going to the library occasionally.

I still couldn't draw that great, but I was getting better, especially with some books that one of the nice librarians had found for me.

It felt like a blink, and then summer vacation was over. Classes started, and things were different, but still the same. It was still school.

At least, that's what it seemed like to me.

* * *

"Hello Bella, I'm Doctor Reeves, but you can call me Rebecca if you like," the brunette woman across from me said from her place in the high-backed chair.

I shifted around on the couch I sat on, my back to the window in the room. "Um, hi?"

"Do you know why you're here?"

I shook my head. All I knew was that instead of walking home like normal, Mom had picked me up and brought me here after school.

"Well, your mother told me that you've been having some trouble at school," she told me in explanation.

My eyebrows squished together. I couldn't remember anything like that. Nobody ever bothered me, and I did my work well. There wasn't any trouble I could think of at all.

"Let's just start by talking a little bit, okay? Maybe… introduce ourselves so we can get know each other better?" she said.

"Okay," I replied, nodding.

She smiled. "Well, as I said, I'm a doctor. I'm thirty-seven. I like hiking and learning, and I don't like tomatoes. What about you?"

"Me neither," I said. "Oh! Um. I'm seven. I'm in first grade, and I like reading and Alice. And um… I don't like zuc… zucchini."

Rebecca leaned back in her chair and rested her cheek on her fist. "Who's Alice?"

I couldn't stop myself from grinning when I thought about her. "She's my guardian angel! That's what Grandma said. She's _really_ pretty."

"What's she like?" Rebecca asked. "Can you tell me a bit about her?"

I nodded, happy to finally find someone that seemed to be interested in listening to me after Grandma. "She's got really dark hair. Like black-black. Super black. And white skin that kinda glows. And her eyes are red. Really, really, _really_ red. Tomato red, but a little different 'cause they change and stuff when she looks around. They're super pretty."

"Why red? Red eyes are unusual aren't they? Why not blue or something?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know. They just are." _I_ thought it was a great eye color, even if she was the only one who had them.

"How did you meet her?" Rebecca asked.

I scooted back on the couch, leaning backwards to rest against the back. "We were visiting my Aunt Becky. Um… she lives in New York City. Mom and I were at the big middle park–" Rebecca's mouth quirked upward slightly, "and I saw her. She was sitting under a tree and looked really lonely so I talked to her. She said I was per-ceptive."

"But your mother didn't see her?" Rebecca questioned curiously.

I shook my head. "Uh-uh. Grandma said it's cause she's _my_ angel."

"Have you seen her since then?"

I nodded. "After the… the funeral." I looked down, my hands tangling with the hems of my shorts' legs. "I was really sad, and then she was there, like she _knew_ I needed her. And she hugged me and made me feel better and tucked me in."

"She sounds very nice," Rebecca commented, smiling.

"Yeah," I agreed. "The nicest. She's an angel so she's gotta be nice, right?"

"Yes, that makes sense," Rebecca agreed, and I felt good because someone finally got it. "I think I understand."

* * *

We talked some more, about other things, like other friends at school (I didn't really have any), and how I was doing in classes (very well). Soon enough, though, she said our time was up and I left the room, mom taking my place as I sat on one of the chairs in the waiting area.

"–simply a coping mechanism. Perfectly normal, healthy even. Nothing to worry about. A few years–"

We left soon after.


	5. First Gap (Alice)

**Chapter 5**  
 **First Gap | Alice**

She moved.

Or rather, _they_ moved. Bella and her mother.

Moved from nice Riverside that was surrounded by the sorts of mountains and forests perfect for what I was when I needed to retreat to _Phoenix_.

 _Phoenix_.

There were no forests around Phoenix. Oh, there were more than enough mountains, but no true forests, not in the middle of a desert. There were trees, clusters of them, swathes, even, that the humans deemed "forests". _My_ opinion was that if it wasn't good enough to hide a vampire, it wasn't a forest.

It frustrated me. Because just as I was settling and getting used to checking in on Bella every so often, _this_ happened and disrupted everything.

It left me with two options: stay in Phoenix, living in some abandoned area and only moving around only after dark (which was usual enough for me, to an extent), or heading somewhere else for a bit and hopefully come up with some better solution.

I managed to do the first for little more than three months.

Long enough that I was able to leave something for Bella on Christmas —though I could only see her reaction in a vision, not in person— before I started having premonitions of the local vampires growing suspicious of my presence and investigating.

So I left to give them time to settle down.

Instead of going north, I decided to do something I'd never done before when in America. Namely, go south.

Mexico was interesting, staying to the western edge at least. But it was southern Central America that was the best.

Cities that were too disorganized to deal with people going missing. Forests with towering trees that created eternal shade. Lakes and rivers high in the mountains with sparkling-clear water.

I loved cities; they were my typical hunting grounds. I loved the constant motion, the way humans felt they couldn't stop running around, the constant changes in them. But this was the exact opposite, and the general serenity was almost soporific.

I'll admit that I lost track of time. It was easy to. I was aware of it passing, but I simply didn't keep track of it. I'd never had to before, and it was easy to fall back into the sort of less-aware state driven only by instinct and need, broken only a few times.

It was only by coincidence that I overheard the date in one of my visits to a city and realized it had been over six months since I'd left Arizona. That revelation caused the pull I felt towards Bella to return full-force, perhaps even magnified, and the sun had hardly set when I left San Benito.

It seemed like nothing had changed when I got back the next night. I already knew that Bella was safe, but seeing it in a vision and seeing it in person were two different things.

I relaxed, satisfied, and made my way back to the warehouse I had claimed as my own.

* * *

 **A/N:** Next chapter will be out next week, as it's already written. I apologize for how short they are right now, but they will be getting longer the further into the story we get as Bella gradually grows and her interactions with Alice shift and change and become more meaningful.


End file.
